War and Batteries: The story of a Banker Turned Photojournalist and Webby Award Winner Marcus Bleasdale in Congo | PART I

2/18/2012 Matt 0 Comments

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This video is the making of the film Dear Obama: A Message from the Victims of the Lord's Resistance Army that won a Webby Award and a People's Voice Award in the News & Politics: Individual Episode category and was produced by the photographer Marcus Bleasdale and the Pulitzer Center.

The project is a direct appeal from children and adults who survived attacks by the brutal Lord's Resistance Army rebel group in Congo and neighboring countries.

About the photographer:

Marcus Bleasdale (born 1968) is a photojournalist, born in the UK to an Irish family. He spent over eight years covering the brutal conflict within the borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the work was published in his book One Hundred Years of Darkness, recognized in the best photojournalism books of the year 2002 by Photo District News in the USA.^{[citation needed]}

Marcus Bleasdale was a successful investment banker and before the age of 30 was the owner of two houses, a 1968 Porsche 911 and was paid £500,000 a year.

In this moment of his life he left his job to travel one year to the Balkans taking 'extraordinarily bad pictures’.

When he came back Marcus enrolled on the one-year photojournalism course at the London College of Printing, which cost slightly under £2,000.

Bleasdale is now one of the world's leading documentary photographers, and the change in his life could hardly have been more dramatic. He owns a flat in Norway with Karin Beate a Norwegian photographer, but no car, and at the age of 40 earns £60,000 a year.

Marcus' work has appeared in the New Yorker, The New York Times, Le Monde, TIME Magazine, Newsweek and National Geographic.

Some tips to be a photojournalist:

You can be the greatest photojournalist in the world, but if you’re not a good business person, you’re not going to succeed.’

'I don’t think I’ve been involved in a single conflict that hasn’t been motivated by economics – whether that be a fight over land or diamonds or gold. I always ask myself, why is this happening? And try to document that. What I learnt at university and in the bank has allowed me to see things and view things in a way that other photojournalists aren’t looking at.’